All your gains will be in the upper range, if you aren't hitting high enough RPMs, those mods are for naught. They don't help your low end nor is it a bottleneck for your turbo so I'm still scratching my head on that one,

"the stock airbox was restricting air flow to the turbo and thus not allowing it to give it that turbo sound." -

All your gains will be in the upper range, if you aren't hitting high enough RPMs, those mods are for naught. They don't help your low end nor is it a bottleneck for your turbo so I'm still scratching my head on that one,

"the stock airbox was restricting air flow to the turbo and thus not allowing it to give it that turbo sound." -

He was mostly right. The stock airbox will restrict some air flow, but will mostly keep engine noise down.So by putting in an aftermarket air intake, you'll maybe gain a few HP (not much) and unleash more engine noise.

He was mostly right. The stock airbox will restrict some air flow, but will mostly keep engine noise down.So by putting in an aftermarket air intake, you'll maybe gain a few HP (not much) and unleash more engine noise.

It won't do crap unless the fuel/air mixture are adjusted, and since this being controlled via the PCM, the OP is just emptying his wallet, not adding HP's..

Final piece put on, my intake.

And now here is what my car sounds like with the new intake installed. the stock airbox was restricting air flow to the turbo and thus not allowing it to give it that turbo sound.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUiEMqlx9bY&feature=youtu.be

Turbo sound? Sounds like every other lawnmower with a fart can on the road being driven by wannabe hipsters thinking a 4 banger is a muscle car..

I mentioned this briefly before, but if you're running at double stock boost, you should really be checking what the turbo limits are, what the clutch/gearbox can take, etc. Don't "take it on good authority". You should be looking at hard figures and looking after your car instead of just chasing BHP and noise.

Upping the turbo boost pressure is a cheap and relatively easy way to gain a few more HP, but it comes at a cost - a heck of a lot of extra strain on other components that needs more than an induction kit/filter to keep running.

I have a similar engined car (I fell in love with its looks) - an Alfa Romeo MiTo. For example, my MiTo started life with a 155BHP 1.4 turbo. Since then I've fitted a new hybrid turbo, a modified catalytic converter, a custom "big bore" exhaust and a few other bits. With 18 psi of boost we got her up to 200BHP, and a much better feel. I've also upgraded the brake pads on the factory-fit brembos also fitted slightly stiffer suspension. That's well over £2,500 worth of work - and not one bit of it is pushing original hardware too far, or chasing a fake noise.

Now, in theory, I could run it at 25 PSI and I could probably get 230BHP, but I wouldn't expect the engine/other components, or even the turbo itself, to last very long under such conditions (I'd be very close to the recommended limit of the already quite fragile M32 gearbox). I could also fit a ridiculous induction kit in an attempt to get more noise out of it (reminds me of people who used to fit ford focus induction kits to their Fiat Puntos to make it sound "better").

If you want to build a fast car on a budget, buy a mini and stick the VTEC engine from a Civic Type R in it. Don't go down the route of pushing turbos and gearboxes beyond their limits, or you're going to end up finding bits of your gearbox scattered along the motorway.

The turbo can make up to 30psi, the tune makes it put up to a max of 22psi. The trifecta tune is made to get max performance but with reliability. The info I got on my car is from the maker of the tune himself, he's done tunes for pretty much every GM car and a lot of other brands to. He's not a fly by night tuner. I'm not the only one running a tune on my Sonic, there's pretty much a whole forum of guys running the trifecta tune on their Sonic's without problems.

I'm not a honda guy. The Sonic is still new yet, when the Cobalt came out people where struggling to get it to 250hp but now people are getting 500+ HP out of them. Of course parts need to be upgraded and parts replaced to get really good amounts of HP, i'm not denying that but i'm on a budget so I can't just drop a ton of money down on parts right now.A DDM sponsored Sonic ran 13's on the track the other day. That's with some upgraded parts but nothing major.

Vincent in turbo cars a turbo back exhaust system does help performance.

No I used a flash based tune. I data logged my car and sent it off to Trifecta Performance and they took a look at it and made a custom tune file for my car which they emailed me then I flashed it into my car.

No I used a flash based tune. I data logged my car and sent it off to Trifecta Performance and they took a look at it and made a custom tune file for my car which they emailed me then I flashed it into my car.

Ok, cool! Flashing the chip is what I meant

High five for doing it yourself!

p.s. you logged the data after completing the hardware upgrades, didn't you?